Using Screen Recordings in Your Async Collaboration
Using a short and focused screen recording is one of my favorite ways to collaborate async. Let's take a look at ways to use this and how to make it second nature.
Screen recordings are like a supercharged email: they convey nuance, demonstrate complex ideas, and create lasting documentation.
While many of us may have experienced these as full meeting recordings, the difference is the impact that a more focused and shorter experience of a solo screen recording can have.
Here are the top three ways I use this technique:
Provide more context for those that want to understand the intuition behind a set of questions, comments, or recommendations
Show a demo of something that is (not) working as expected or how it was built
Create rich documentation that blends written context and steps with a visual representation of what it looks like
To make this second nature, these five steps make the process easier to adopt:
Check your audio quality with a test recording to ensure that your voice is clear enough to be heard
Set your stage before recording to ensure you have the relevant browser tabs, files, and other apps open to where you want to start
Keep it focused to avoid overloading your audience with multiple topics that are loosely related or unnecessary commentary
Double check your mic level after you press record to ensure that you don't spend minutes talking and your computer isn't listening
Use pause & resume if you run into a snag like a webpage is taking a while to load or something doesn't go as planned
In terms of tools, I use Zoom Clips for practically all of my recordings. It works reasonably well aside from not having folders to organize clips by client, topic, etc; a naming convention is a decent workaround for now.
One challenge to be mindful of is the content that you're sharing and whether any of it is confidential or contains sensitive information (e.g. PII or MNPI).
Refer to this newsletter from a few months ago for a set of steps to help reduce exposure to sharing those sorts of things.
TLDR: Try using short, focused clips as part of async collaboration. Make it part of your workflow. Check your clip for sensitive info before sharing.
